Missions enhances work of Alabama Children’s Homes

At least four Alabama Baptist Children’s Homes and Family Ministries professionals say lessons they learned in volunteer missions recently will help them in their work.
   
Children’s Homes social worker Jennifer Harvey and professional counselor Ashley Alvarado served in Nicaragua with Chosen Children’s Ministry.
   
“The first day was spent at an orphanage, where we had the freedom to spend time with the kids doing whatever we wanted to do,” said Alvarado, who is training to help children in play therapy at the Children’s Homes. “We quickly learned in Nicaragua that giving hugs, throwing a ball, singing a song or blowing bubbles was sufficient for us to share God’s love with the children there. God taught Jennifer and me about the impact a small gesture of love can make on a child’s life.”
   
Harvey, Alvarado and their teammates carried American-made Vacation Bible School materials and activities to share the gospel with the Nicaraguan kids. “We found that helping them make simple bracelets and other interaction were as true a testimony of God’s love as opening God’s Word and reading them Scripture,” Alvarado said.
   
“Our hearts were truly touched by the joy evident in these children’s lives, especially considering that so many of them have no family and no material possessions except the clothes on their backs,” Alvarado added.
   
“We are certain that God blessed us more richly through this experience than we could have ever asked for or imagined.”
   
Debbie Keyes, a social worker with the Children’s Homes in Birmingham, went to Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, East Africa for two weeks of ministry among the mostly Muslim, poverty-stricken population. She and fellow members of Philadelphia Baptist Church, Birmingham, helped with a seven-day crusade, showed the “Jesus” film in the Swahili language twice, ministered at local colleges and led various seminars. Through the crusade and the “Jesus” film presentations, 204 people were saved.
Orphanage needed
   
The group looked at starting an orphanage in Dar Es Salaam. Many adults die from AIDS, and their children are often left to wander the streets looking for food, Keyes explained. She discovered the biggest need is for homes for children ages birth through five years.
   
“What God has taught me in Tanzania that I brought back to my job at Alabama Baptist Children’s Homes and Family Ministries is that the kids we help in Alabama can later go on to help others” she noted. “I saw Tanzanian students training to go back to their villages to teach others. They want to help others have a better life in Tanzania. I can see the children we help in Alabama having that same mission. That encourages me to realize that lives I touch now can reach out and touch others 10, 20 or even 30 years down the road.”
   
Bryan Hill, director of social services at the Children’s Homes campus in Decatur, was the chief cook for a missions team from Southside Baptist Church, Decatur. The group, including four boys living at the Decatur campus, went to Penticton, British Columbia, to help prepare for the Canadian Southern Baptist Convention.
   
When he wasn’t preparing meals, Hill said he gained a new perspective of ministry and teenagers’ participation in it. “We participated in ‘servant evangelism,’ something I haven’t seen much of in Alabama,” Hill said. “We picked up trash and pulled weeds in front of various businesses, gave church information to many of the merchants, and saw that they were very open to hearing the gospel because of the help we gave them.”
   
Hill said he was most impressed by how excited the teenagers were about doing door-to-door surveys. “It was refreshing to see their willingness to do something other church members often hate to do. The youth were even excited at the end of the week.”
   
Serving in volunteer missions helps to refresh Children’s Homes staff spiritually, physically and emotionally. The new ideas with which they return to Alabama benefit their ministries as well as the individuals and families they help.